Thursday, April 16, 2009

Fan Jinghua: Childhood: There Was a Family

Childhood IV

There Was a FamilyThe two trees around her home were the tallest in our village,And they could be seen from the school playground.One of our games was to walk straight across the field toward them.The huge pagoda tree was home to two nestles of magpies,And its flowers were so tall that we could not reach even with a bamboo pole.The tree provided them with vegetable and stuffing for steam buns.There was also a chinaberry, littering so manyBitter yellowish dates every year, which they would use to wash clothes.Occasionally, communal co-op would buy in,But most of the years there would be dates hanging high,Conspicuous fruits, uselessExcept for reminding us that winter was not stark bleak.Then spring came, with burgeons fanning out so quickThat tiny purple flowers had to jostle their way for sunlight.Then, the mother was dead, and the father could not properly speak.Then, her elder sister surfaced the pond in a thick morning mist;And her father went insane.Before long, her brother was imprisoned for criminal revenge;She was taken to be the wife for a moron.On the year for his release, her brother was executedBecause a Sterner Punishment Movement was launched.Then, her home was taken over by some wild dogs,And we all tried to avoid the premise.

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Fan (family name), born in 1965 in China, currently in Singapore. There are in this blog: Classical Chinese Poems, Contemporary Chinese Poems, Sylvia Plath in English and Chinese, My own poems in two Languages.... All the translations are mine. My published poetry book Faltering Words contains my selected poem suites not in English.
在此博客上可读到：中国古典诗、中国当代诗、普拉斯诗歌原文和汉译、我自己的双语诗歌。这里的翻译都是我自己做的。除了翻译几本学术著作外，我还有英文学术论文出版于牛津大学；另外已出诗集《期期之言》（组诗选）。